The Eagle Angle’s Convergence Editor, Rachel Moretti, sat down with senior Sam Drogosch to discuss school, singing and her prospective social work internship to Africa.

What are you involved in at school?

I’m in choir and chorale. I was in physics club for a bit, okay I went to like two meetings, but that’s on Fridays and it doesn’t really work well with my schedule. I wish I did more extracurricular stuff like environmental club, that would be really cool, but I am really only in choir. Music is really my passion.

What do you do outside of school?

I am in YPB (youth praise band) and youth group. And I do voice stuff with my voice teacher. And I try to volunteer as much as I can and do random things around the community and around Dallas because I don’t know that just makes me happy. It makes me happy to do stuff for others. If I don’t do it, if I am not serving often, then my life is just kind of like at a standstill. I have to be giving up my time in order to be happy. I try to do as much of that stuff as I can. I like to do stuff with the fam and with friends. It’s pretty busy, and I just do stuff all over the place.

How was your summer trip to Africa last year?

It was the best thing of my life. It was incredible, because you hear about all the stuff that is going on over there and you hear about all the pain and heartache. But you don’t really realize what all that stuff means until you are actually there and it becomes the reality when you are there and you are surrounded by it. It was really hard at first to see everything, but throughout the trip I was able to see how language barriers and the poverty and all the stuff that was kind of keeping us separated from there was just kind of all broken down by the love that we were all able to share. So, it was amazing to see that they held this crazy amount of love that you don’t find around here and they were able to share it with us.

What are you most looking forward to after graduation?

I’m looking forward to life and all the things that it will bring me because I have a lot of things that I want to do when I graduate. I want to go back to Africa for sure, there is a four month long social work internship in Uganda that I want to do. I also want to go and travel the world. I want see the world, that’s probably one of the things I am most excited for. I want to meet more people around the world and explore different cultures. I’m excited for that freedom.

What would the internship entail?

Its at a place called Abide Family Center in Jinja, Uganda and that was probably one of my favorite places that we went to over there. There are over 3 thousand orphanages in Jinja alone and Jinja is smaller than Allen, so imagine 3 thousand orphanages in Allen, that’d be insane. And they are all like filled with kids and they are all dirty. A lot of the orphans in orphanages do not actually need to be there because they have families that can take care of them but families feel like the orphanage is the best place for the kids or that they can just dump them off at the orphanage and they do not have to ever worry about them again. So with a lot of adoptions people eventually find out that the kids they are adopting actually have parents and it becomes illegal and they spent three years of their life trying to adopt this kid and now they find out they have parents and can’t do it anymore. So what Abide does is when kids that actually have parents and family members that can take care of them get dropped off at orphanages, those kids will hopefully get taken over to Abide and if the parents want to take care of the children but do not have the means to, Abide will help them. They can live there for up to six months and they teach them parenting and business classes and then they feed them and have bible classes and child developmental classes. It is just a really great thing because it keeps families together and its focus is family preservation rather than having tons of kids in orphanages. If I did the social work internship I would get to go and do case studies and see if the kids actually have parents that are able to take care of them and if they have the drive to do it. I think that would be amazing to do and I would really get to help with the family preservation and be with the kids and travel.

What has been the most influential moment in your singing career?

Being in the Texas All-State Women’s choir because I have never experienced a musical moment like that one at the concert. Throughout the three days of rehearsals, we were just all enjoying it together and no one was worrying about their chairs. I learned so much from my director, Jeffrey Redding. He was just out of this world and he was just amazing. He focused so much on having us become a family and every person surrounding me was an amazing musician. It was just a one in a lifetime kind of thing. I feel like going into state and knowing that [I] made it there kind of made me feel like I could do more than I actually thought I could before. I never really gave myself enough credit and going there has really helped me since then. It just showed me how important music is to me and how much I love it.